Braised beef with porcini mushrooms
Bistecca alla cacciatora
Most Italians – especially those from central Italy – have a strong affection for the wild porcini mushrooms. The name alone gives a hint of the particular qualities, as ‘porcini’ means ‘piglet’ and the fungi do have a chewy meat-like taste and texture. Besides porcini have a symbiotic relationship with the trees they grow under, and experts claim there’s a difference in taste and aroma between porcini grown under pine trees and those nourished in a forest of chestnuts. I’m not able to detect the subtle nuances, but porcini do have more taste than cultivated white mushrooms, giving braised beef with porcini mushrooms a hearty, earthy flavour.
Ingredients
300 g beef (chunk or sirloin) cut in ultra thin slices
50 g pancetta or bacon
3 cloves of garlic
300 ml red wine
150 ml tomato paste
25 g dried porcini or other mushrooms
1 tbsp juniper berries
Olive oil
Fresh oregano, salt, pepper
Preparation
Leave the porcini to soak in boiling water
Dice and fry pancetta and then beef and chopped garlic in olive oil
Add wine and reduce the liquid to half before stirring in the tomato paste
Crush the juniper berries with a pestle and add them to the sauce along with salt, pepper and oregano.
Squeeze water off the porcini and add it to the sauce
Chop the porcini finely and mix them with the meat and the sauce.
Leave the braised beef with porcini to simmer for another 10 minutes before serving.
More beef recipes
Dried mushrooms add an earthy flavour to these delicately thin slices of beef.
I don’t think I’ve ever tried porcini mushrooms but that looks delicious!
They can be quite hard to find outside Italy. But ordinary mushrooms can be used as a substitute.
Thank you for the recipe, Mette. Looks delicious :)
My pleasure:)
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